02/03/2009 by lizit.

Not sure what I’m going to do with this post - maybe something for more thinking, but sudden thought that I might be able to make some links between work I did around barriers to getting into SL and stuff I am doing now on supporting students in creating content in SL - opposite sides of same coin?

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01/12/2008 by lizit.

Came across an interesting blog post today from David White. He suggests that residents and visitors might be more useful descriptions than Prensky’s digital natives and immigrants.  The thinking resonates with me, but also got me thinking about immersionists and augmentationalists - see for example Henrik Bennetsen in the Second Life Creativity wiki.

Playing with this a bit more, I begin to wonder what the factors are that mean some people tend to residency/immersion while others tend to visiting/augmentation (if those are actually analogous) and has me also wondering about the stuff around adoption of technology - and even the hype cycle.  Are there learners that are more likely to fall into one ‘category’ - category may be too strong a word - than another and what determines this?  Are there links with learning styles.

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16/11/2008 by lizit.

The EndNote training was useful and convinced me I might as well go with that as any of the other software options, especially as there is also a web version that will synch with the installed version.  It is possible to attach notes and there is also space in the tool for including notes within a bibliographic description.

Friday I had a dry run with the ReLIVE presentation.  From my perspective I made a bit of a meal of it - not helped by getting ’stage fright’ and ‘drying’ for the first time I can recall.  Very strange suddenly being at a complete loss for words and not really being able to make sense of what I had written down. I think there were a number of contributory factors which included not really owning what I was saying (following a pattern rather than doing my own thing), an awareness there was a lot of material to get through and I wasn’t completely sure how to pace it, slight discomfort with the technology - that monitor needs a longer cable (!), and, perhaps most importantly, an awareness that the people in the room are folk I will be working with for some time and I wanted not to appear incompetent.  In the event, I did manage to get into the subject matter and got useful feedback both on the content and on how I might rejig the presentation slightly both for my comfort, but also to avoid possible misunderstandings.  Probably being less than happy with myself was positive in realising what a supportive group of people I am working with.

I’ve spent some time over the weekend revamping the presentation and playing with EndNote.

At the research group meeting on Tuesday in SL, somebody mentioned the “hype cycle” - a take the Gartner Group have on uptake of technology and a very different curve from Rogers - might be worth looking at that some time in relation to SL.  The other concepts that I’ve heard a couple of times recently are immersionist and augmentalist, used to describe different users of virtual worlds (those that get fully immersed and create there own place witin the virtual world and those who see it as a tool to be used alongside other tools) - other stuff worth exploring a bit further.

This next week will be busy with ReLIVE 08 and a staff development day in Birmingham.  Then, theoretically at least, things quieten down and I can focus on DPhil related stuff.

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